It was back in 2002 that while working for Los Angeles METRO I wondered into Chinatown after work and found myself this Christmas tree.

A simple yet elegant way of saying that I too want to express my holiday spirit without looking too much like a panzy. And it worked…almost. The tree was a hit, and though some laughed, I stood firm by my Christmas tree. It has been nine years now that I’ve proudly displayed it on my desk at each of my employers in the past decade.

After METRO I was encouraged by a Moore Industries engineer and a good friend Jerry Durr to fit it up with some L.E.D.’s and I tried… but the project took too long and the lighting was never finished. The Moore Industries version had hot glue remnants all over and unconnected L.E.D.’s slowly began falling off.

From Moore it traveled with me to Energy Innovations and then again to RayTracker while never changing a desk. A pink desk too boot, because getting a pink desktop was that the penalty one paid for being out of the office on a work day. It was WET Design after that and that is also where this picture was taken.

WET is also the last place I’ve displayed the original tree, call it Tree 1.0 if you will. It was then that I decided to buy a one way ticket to Poland and I’m not sure where and if I ever packed the tree. When packing 16 years of stuff into two suitcases the tree wasn’t exactly a priority number one, and I forgot about it when packing a few big boxes I shipped to Poland before my leave.

With Christmas approaching and wanting to continue my tradition I took a look around Allegro, a Polish version of eBay, and found me a Tree 2.0, an identical Chinese knock off of the Tree 1.0 I had in the States. So here it is, standing tall on my desk at GOVECS, Christmas Tree 2.0!